When you're a kid people - typically much older than you, and hunched over - say you look like _____. You look like your father, oh you look like you mother. Then they look the adult you're with in the eye and say "I see some of your parents too." My family has been in the same City for a long time, and I had been getting that since before I could walk. My son get's it now and he just started walking last month. We grow up being told who we look like on the outside but it isn't until you're much older when someone, who is typically a sibling, says "You sound like dad!" and we realize who we look like on the inside.
My sisters and I are a strange blend of our parents respective personalities. My older sister is methodical like my father, but funny like my mother. Also, she eats like my father - a pork fueled trash can. At this point in the trip I just stopped telling my mother how much char siu had been consumed because my father was in for some serious plant based detox when he got home. My mom eats meat but my father will get fired up over an Arbys commercial. When we go out BBQ back home, I refer to his meals as "The Ark" you know....two of every animal. My middle sister has my mothers endless heart and my fathers diamond hard stubbornness. If those two got trapped in an elevator the bickering would create a black-hole that would envelop the planet. I. Well. I got my mothers sense of humor, cooking skills (thank you Mom!), and my fathers emotions. He and I cry at everything! Movies, TV, commercials = waterworks. I well up just THINKING about the last scene in Saving Private Ryan. You know the one, when right after the deus ex machina moment when it fades back to present day. Ya, I lose it like I was dumped on prom night. Now I say all of this not to evoke laughter - which is merely a byproduct - but because water flows two ways, and the opposite of damp is desert. I woke up on this morning, headed down to the lounge where I knew I'd find my dad deep in a news paper and as I walked around the corner it hit me [hard] this was the end of the trip; this day was going to end in tears. I saw him and thought to my self "Do not cry first!"
The things to do list on Hong Kong was much shorter than the Singapore list, so we planned to stop at my favorite bracelet store which had been closed the day before (Yes, I double checked it this time dad!
) then lunch and a long wonder before heading back to the hotel in the early afternoon to pack. My flight out wasn't until the 11pm hour but my dad was transferring to the Sky City Marriott so that his morning flight to Chicago was easier to get to. No need for him to sleep in Central when he's got a late morning flight. Also, this way we could make the journey out of Central together. So breakfast in the hotel was in the books, and while a week earlier I would have scoffed at this, as I have several times in this TR, I embraced my cornflakes and fresh fruit as my father was so happy with his bacon and that there was no way I could get him lost in the lounge. The bracelet store was back in Central on Des Voeux road, and for lunch I had a treat up my sleeve for the ol' man. He had never been to Din Tai Fung!
*record scratch*
Of course we can't make it to the subway without another one of these
Back among the markets
"Like Sam the butcher bringing Alice the meat" - Beastie Boys
A hello to my favorite noodle spot, which we did not get to hit on this trip
Bracelet shopping was a great success. The owner of the store, who has been in the same location for nearly 25 years remembered me from 20015 and let me get right to work picking beads. Now these bracelets do not have any spiritual or religious significance to me but many years ago I committed to seeking only two things away from my travels - bracelets and photographs. Occasionally I pick up heart burn, or a hangover but those are fleeting, and I have done well sticking to my goal.
These bracelets are my memories, and stories. I've collected various different ones from all over the world, and every morning I open my drawer and think about all the wonderful things I've eaten or seen. In
2015 while in Shanghai I bought a bracelet JUST because the salesman made me laugh when he said "[It's] real tree wood" about a bracelet with fake beads. I just love having a memory of all of these places.
After some selecting, measuring, changing and about half an hour my two new bracelets were ready. Custom fit and made just for me.
The middle one "Water" and right one "Fire" are new. The dark one on the left is from 2017 for any eagle eyes who re-read that TR waiting for this post.
I must promote this business, and hope if you too like bracelets you'll check it out.
Pockets full of bracelets we headed over to Causeway Bay for lunch. By this time most of the talking had stopped. Not for lack of anything to say, and not because we didn't want to talk, but we were both trying desperately to slow down time. Check out was at 4pm, we kinda had to pack so the goal was to be back at the hotel at 2:30 and it was quarter to twelve. It didn't matter that I had nearly 12 hours until departure, 4pm felt like Cinderellas stroke of midnight and we were both going to turn into pumpkins. My excitement to take my dad to DTF was matched my my enthusiasm for bamboo noodles, or his chili crab in Singapore, but the balance of him wanting to eat and not wanting to have our last
anything happen at all turned into indifferent silence.
Luckily Din Tai Fung is no crap shoot, and the power of food once again brought people together. Like an old record player starting from zero and accelerating to 33rpm with a Ruhhrhhhh the sound came back to my world and he started talking.
"How did you know this restaurant was here?"
"This chain or this location?"
"Both"
"A buddy (@Moondog) took me to one in Shanghai. I think I went 3 times in a row." "DTF is a chain"
"Oh, it's a chain. Well, I'm impressed. This is fantastic"
"That pork fried rice is church huh?"
"OH! It's better than you said it would be"
There isn't much I enjoy more than introducing someone to a meal or food they really enjoy, and this compliment from my father is high high praise.
Perfection
On the way out I told him "It was a tradition to talk a picture with Bao head on your first visit." This is a lie, but really think it would be a fun fad to start. Also, they have the same amount of hair
Full of more pork (again!) (sorry mom) we decided to walk up Hennessy Road towards the Wan Chai MTR station would be the best for our cardiovascular health. Also, walking was the slowest form of transportation we had, and time was racing away.
We passed the villain hitters. If you have time I highly recommend having your bad demons beaten with a shoe! Also, if you don't know what this is - youtube!
Hahah Oh good. It has been 50 feet since the last mall.
Neon
double neon
The crowd in black and white
Red
Signage
Trolly trolly
We walked past a fantastic smell - next time Hong Kong. Next time!
Back at the JW the hotel room that welcomed me two days earlier now just looked sad. It was time to go. I packed everything I could knowing I wouldn't see my bag for two days and that I'd need space in my back pack for anything else I collected along the way. A few photos of the cloudy view before departing.
Back in the taxi because my dad "just felt more comfortable doing it his way" we found our selves back in the quiet. The cab ride seemed to last forever, and by time we got to Sky City I dove out of the cab trying to escape the silence. My dad checked in, we dropped our bags in his room and I recommended we check out the lounge as I had been told it had some great airport views. After grabbing some drinks and snacks we headed out to the patio, which as promised had some fantastic views of HKG, then we did what two people trying to fill the silence do. We overcompensated. We just started talking, and talking and talking and arguing and talking. Not about anything deep, we weren't even disagreeing on anything. We were just trying to not notice the sun had gone down.
Finally the frenetic pace of our conversation broke, and like when extended turbulence ceases on a flight you feel a moment of relaxation. He asked me what my favorite meal was.
"Well, how are we quantifying favorite?" (still kind of hot from the last conversation) "Because if we're taking favorite item I ate, and favorite meal those aren't the same thing."
"Both" he said
"The best thing I ate was the Chili Crab, but this trip was a murders row of food.........Everything we've eaten deserves to be the best thing we ate."
*smiling*
"Now, the best meal I had? No questions. You, me, goose, first night in Hong Kong. Can't be beat, ever! I had my meal with dad"
His eyes started to shine, so I quickly turned the question back to him.
"My curry grouper head." "Oh, I missed that so much."
"That was good" I added "You know we can have it again.......we have the miles."
We spent nearly the next hour discussing every possible route between Rochester, New York and Singapore. The deeper we got into it, the heavier the reality hit my father - there is no short cut to curry fish head. He had been there 50 times, maybe more but this trip stood out not because I was there, but because it hurt. A lot. At 73 years old he shows many of his [nearly] 4,000,000 miles without a flat bed. He spent decades not burning the candle on both ends, but lobbing candles into the furnace to make our family what it is today, what it was while he was gone, and what it will be in the future. It's not like he stopped flying in 2000 and retired. He worked full time until 2016 driving over an hour each way to a company he took through a turn around and saw relisted on the stock exchange. The man is tired. We sat there looking on GC map, discussing direct flights from EWR or stops in Germany via JFK on SQ and (as we know) there was no "shorter way" to be found. I asked him if he wanted to come back for his 75th birthday, and replied "[A]s much as I want to come back, I'll have to think about the best way to do it." I've got to say, even at 35 I appreciate the half lie. Of course he wants to come back, he just doesn't have the heart to tell me he [probably] can't.
Two years ago when my wife and I moved from California to North Carolina it was my job to sell and move out of our house. She had already moved across the country to start her job and so I'd come home from work and pack a little every night until I was sleeping on an air mattress. I never liked our house when we bought it, and tolerated it while we lived there, but after the movers left and I took my key off the ring to leave on the kitchen counter I sat on the steps and looked at the empty. I had been there so many times, it was my home, we painted the walls, I didn't like being there but I never imagined being anyplace else, and as I sat on the steps a puddle of tears formed at my feet because I was never coming back to that house. Twenty years ago it didn't dawn on my father that he would never be back, why would it? He had been to both Hong Kong and Singapore so many times he lost count. The airline miles, the upgrades, the amenity kits, hadn't been counted in so long he forget when he stopped counting. Why would he ever dream that he wouldn't be going to these places. As we sat on the balcony, he was completely cognoscente that this was good bye to a enormous part of his life, and it was almost certainly forever. You could see it in his face, and then the silence came back.
First he was sad the trip was over, then that he was saying goodbye to Hong Kong [and Singapore], then he was sad that he had made a dreadful mistake; he waited 20 years. There was no point in the past two decades where he did not have the capacity to make this trip but he missed the transition from taking it all for granted to forgetting how much he left here and you could see the regret on his shoulders. We were standing outside the hotel waiting for the shuttle, and he joked about my foolish route home. I didn't admit that I was desperate not to fly it, and would give anything to fly United with him. I stood there dreading the arrival of the bus, which as it crested the hill physically hurt me. While so much of this trip has been a reflection of my father's experience, I am the dog that caught the car. The trip I had been dreaming about since before I knew I was dreaming had happened and it was darn near perfect, but it was over. I may have to wait 30 years for my son to want to go some place with me, for him to need to see my old footprints. The joy of getting what you want, when what you want isn't material, but is a feeling is wrapped in the deep sadness that you can never have it again. Not the way you imagined it, not in its original purity. My dream became a reality, and now my dream is a memory which as I walked on that bus ever so slightly began to fade.
Thanking me through tears he cried while we hugged. I cried as soon as the bus door closed.
I'd like to think he didn't cry alone in his hotel room, but then again I am sure he would like to think I didn't cry in the lounge, aware of my own mistake and cursing myself for not taking one more flight with my dad.
Next: Part 8: Johannesburg!